TIMBERLAND | INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP

Timberland has a long heritage of environmental stewardship,
responsible sourcing and social justice. Our CSR efforts date back to
the early 1990’s when we launched our Path of ServiceTM
employee volunteer program and our supplier Code of Conduct.
Timberland’s past, present, and future are fueled by a desire to
innovate and operate our business in an accountable, responsible and
sustainable manner. In these 20+ years of driving commerce &
justice hand in hand, we’ve learned that we innovate and drive
progress best in collaboration with others.

Below are examples of collaborations Timberland has participated in
over the years to drive positive social and environmental progress
across the footwear and apparel industry, and beyond.

BICEP, a project of Ceres,
was founded in November 2008 and is an advocacy coalition of
businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful
energy and climate legislation and giving consumer-facing businesses a
stronger voice in the formation of progressive climate change
legislation. Timberland and the other founding members of BICEP saw a
need to form the new coalition, rather than joining other established
organizations whose members tend to be larger emitters with different
needs than what many consumer companies face. BICEP’s members are
primarily consumer companies that are not major greenhouse gas
emitters, but will nevertheless be impacted by climate regulations and
other climate-related impacts. BICEP members believe that climate
change will impact all sectors of the economy and that various
business perspectives are needed to provide a full spectrum of
viewpoints for solving the climate and energy challenges.

In April 2005, Timberland and a number of other brands formed a
coalition called the Leather Working Group (LWG), an organization
with the objective of developing and maintaining a protocol that
assesses the compliance and environmental performance of tanners, and
promoting sustainable and appropriate environmental business practices
within the leather industry.

“Initially, there was pushback from the tanneries, who said, ‘We
don’t need another audit’” reveals Rick LaTouch, Senior Manager of
Leather Development at Timberland. However, once tanneries realized
the benefit of creating alignment on environmental issues the
improvement was exponential. LWG environmental audits are conducted
18 months apart, and the results between first and subsequent audits
for all participating tanneries were overall reductions of 15 to 20
percent in water and energy use. Tanneries have also seen improvements
in air emissions, water effluent quality, waste, and restricted
substance handling. LWG audited tanneries were soon setting the
standard for environmental performance in the footwear leather
industry. As a result of its commitment to the LWG, Timberland has
set a target to source leather only from tanneries that are rated
silver or higher—not an easy task for the factories in question.
“Obtaining a medal isn’t easy,” LaTouch points out. “The protocol is
dynamic and is regularly updated to ensure that it is challenging but
achievable. Seldom does a tannery get audited the same way twice. The
tanners understand that it’s good for the industry – and the planet.”

In 2007, Timberland joined forces with REI to launch a group within
the Outdoor
Industry Association (OIA) that was then called the Eco Working
Group. The group set out to find a common way to measure the
performance of outdoor industry products. The impetus for the project
was the “nutrition label” and the
“Green
Index” rating systems that Timberland had introduced the preceding
year to provide consumers with environmental performance data about
the company and of its footwear products. OIA members were interested
to see if something similar could be adopted by the outdoor industry
so that outdoor consumers could make more informed purchasing
decisions. What started as a small group of leading outdoor brands
turned into an industry-wide effort involving nearly 200 brands and
their suppliers. The initiative got so much momentum that other
industry sectors—like the apparel industry—took notice and organized
to adopt the tool.

The story of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition begins with a letter
sent in 2010 designed to get the attention of even a busy CEO. At the
top: the logos of Walmart and Patagonia. John Fleming, who was then
Walmart’s chief merchandising officer, and Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s
founder, signed the letter, which invited chief executives of some of
the world’s biggest clothing companies–fierce competitors, ordinarily
— to join together to develop an index to measure the environmental
impact of their products. Having received this letter, Timberland was
quick to accept the invitation and follow through with its
commitment to the industry by donating its product environmental
impact measurement and product labeling system, the Green Index. In
addition to leveraging the work of the Green Index and the OIA’s Eco
Working Group, the SAC incorporated data from Nike to make a tool
specific to the entire apparel industry. The SAC voted to approve
this new index in June 2012, renamed the Higg Index.